LONDON, December 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Manpower Software plc, the leader in workforce optimisation solutions, is pleased to announce the acquisition of Baum Hart Partners, the market leader in the provision of integrated software systems, consultancy, training and support services principally to the National Health Service (NHS). The acquisition of Baum Hart enables Manpower Software to extend its offering to the NHS as well as move into new vertical markets.

Chris Lee, Managing Partner at Baum Hart Partners, commented:

The strategic fit of Manpower Software and Baum Hart Partners is excellent for customers and staff. Manpower Software has significant resources to invest in the customer base and products of Baum Hart Partners.

LAUSANNE, Switzerland, December 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Diagnoplex, a developer of molecular cancer diagnostics today announced the closing of a Series A financing raising CHF10 million ($8.3 million). The A-round was led by Novartis Venture Fund and NeoMed, with Initiative Capital Romandie acting as co-investor. The Novartis Venture Fund was also a seed investor in the company. BCCC Avocats acted as counsel to the investors and BMP Associés acted as counsel to the company.

In connection with the financing, Anja König, Ph.D., a Managing Director of Novartis Venture Fund, and Thomas Goebel, Ph.D., a Principal at NeoMed, will join Diagnoplex' board of directors, while Claude Suard, Partner at DEFI Gestion, will join the board as an observer.

Would you insist someone change if they are left-handed?   90% of the world is right-handed.  Short?  That's relative but the average height for an American man is under 5'10".    Genes do a lot of things, and a new study from the Abramson Cancer Center and Department of Psychiatry in the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine says that smokers who carry a particular version of a gene for an enzyme that regulates dopamine in the brain may suffer from concentration problems and other cognitive deficits when abstaining from nicotine – a problem that puts them at risk for relapse during attempts to quit smoking.

Public confidence in the honesty of scientists is being harmed by a small minority of researchers who behave badly, heard attendees of a meeting in Madrid on 17-18 November that was organized by the newly formed Research Integrity Forum of the European Science Foundation (ESF) in collaboration with the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).   The European research organizations agreed to work more closely to tackle the problem of fraud and other misconduct in science.

Fraud in science includes inventing data (fabrication), manipulating data to produce an unjustified result (falsification) or presenting the work of other researchers as one's own (plagiarism).

It is widely accepted that Upper Paleolithic early modern humans spread westward across Europe about 42,000 years ago, variably displacing and absorbing Neandertal (alt. spelling Neanderthal) populations in the process. However, Middle Paleolithic assemblages persisted for another 8,000 years in Iberia, presumably made by Neandertals. It has been unclear whether these late Middle Paleolithic Iberian assemblages were made by Neandertals, and what the nature of those humans might have been. 

New research, published Dec. 8 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is now shedding some light on what were probably the last Neandertals. 

A preliminary study suggests that economic incentives appear to be effective for achieving short-term weight loss, according to a report in the December 10 issue of JAMA.

New research at the Faculty of Life Sciences (LIFE) at the University of Copenhagen – shows that dark chocolate is far more filling than milk chocolate, lessening our craving for sweet, salty and fatty foods. In other words, eating dark chocolate may be an efficient way to keep your weight down over Christmas. 

We have known for a long time that it is healthier to eat dark chocolate, but now scientists at the Department of Human Nutrition at LIFE, University of Copenhagen, have found that dark chocolate also gives more of a feeling of satiety than milk chocolate. 

Chocolate experiment 

Two common diabetes drugs — rosiglitazone and pioglitazone — are linked to higher fracture rates in women, according to a meta-analysis in CMAJ by a team of researchers from the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom and Wake Forest University in the United States.

The drugs, called thiazolidinediones, help improve glycemic control and decrease insulin resistance in patients with diabetes. 

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, December 10 /PRNewswire/ --

Michael Merzenich, PhD, a leading research scientist at the University of California and the Chief Scientist of Posit Science Corporation, gave the plenary lecture today at the opening ceremony of a joint conference of the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science in Amsterdam. His talk, entitled Cortical Plasticity-Based Therapeutics, presented evidence that neuroplasticity-based training can be a new kind of therapeutic tool used to address a wide variety of conditions from healthy aging to mental illness to dementia to brain injury.

By watching the motions of 28 stars orbiting the Milky Way's most central region with admirable patience and amazing precision, astronomers have been able to study the supermassive black hole lurking there. It is known as Sagittarius A* (pronounced "Sagittarius A star"). The new research marks the first time that the orbits of so many of these central stars have been calculated precisely and reveals information about the enigmatic formation of these stars — and about the black hole to which they are bound.